


The Heart of the Matter (The Devil You Know Remix)

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Good Omens Fusion, Alternate Universe - Religion & Lore, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Bets & Wagers, Deal With the Devil, Fables - Freeform, Javert’s Wooden Heart, M/M, Temporary Character Death, The Power Of Love, sexy dreams, the Eternal Battle between Good and Evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-06 06:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15880842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: “Give me your heart,” the devil said to Javert, as he had said to desperate men and women the world over.Afterwards, he kept Javert’s in a glass jar on a shelf among his houseplants in the waiting room of Hell.





	The Heart of the Matter (The Devil You Know Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Subject of a Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12498580) by [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/pseuds/Esteliel). 



“Give me your heart,” the devil said to Javert, as he had said to desperate men and women the world over. 

Javert, from long acquaintance with the sorts of deals that desperate men and women make, at first refused, and then he refused again. He thought he knew the worth of his soul, and considered it unwise to play his hand so soon. 

However, the road to Hell is paved with the pride of those who thought they could negotiate the best deal with the devil. On the third try, the devil succeeded, and bartered a lifetime of dispassionate, unimpeachable service in exchange for the proud heart of Inspector Javert.

Afterwards, the devil kept Javert’s heart in a glass jar, as he kept all the hearts he had won from men and women across the world. He stored the jars on a high shelf amongst his prized houseplants, in his particular corner of the waiting room to Hell. 

Intermittently, in between projects involving random plagues and earthly temptations, the devil would pause to admire his handiwork: neat rows of gleaming, pristine jars as far as the eye could see, each encasing a frantic, despairing, clamouring heart behind cold glass — waiting for their owners to be ushered into the greedy maw of Hell when the time was ripe.

On occasion, his fellow devils would come to visit him, to compare their own harvests of hearts, and to engage in the expected flattery or the even more traditional disparagement. On other occasions, a more heavenly visitor would come calling: his old adversary, the angel, with his silver hair and silver cane and affable smile. 

The devil was aware his relationship with the angel was unorthodox, for angels did not ordinarily consort with those of the Hellish Host. But this silver angel claimed an interest in the devil’s methods of horticulture, and over untold millennia they had had countless conversations regarding such diverse topics as cartography and hieromancy, the true nature of the Heavenly Powers, and the works of Richard Wagner.

“You seem pleased with yourself, my friend,” the angel said one day, when he happened upon the devil standing before Javert’s jar. “Was this a special acquisition?”

“This is the inspector, my faithful servant,” the devil said. “He thought he knew the worth of his soul. He saw how little his own family esteemed theirs — his own father bartered his soul away for a drink and his mother sold hers for a sum that lasted the family all of three years. He resisted me twice, but he has finally succumbed: he has sold me his heart for the chance to rise above his station and to serve the law without fear or favour, and counted it a good bargain.”

The angel looked long at the jar. “The poor man,” he said, at last. “Did you tell him what he would be giving up, apart from his immortal soul?”

The devil clasped his own breast in a mockery of contrition. “I’m sorry, was I expected to make full disclosure? You can’t criticise me for misleading, old boy, it’s the very thing that devils do.”

The angel was silent, and the devil, desiring to wallow in his victory, decided to show off a little. “See here, this is why he decided to avail himself of my gift.”

The devil raised a dram of his power in his red hand, and the glass around the inspector’s one-time heart began to glow, displaying images of what had transpired before said heart had been surrendered from Javert’s living breast.

The glass showed them the face of Javert as a young man, an adjutant-guard in the bagne of Toulon. Not quite twenty, he had supervised the beatings of prisoners, the brutal strip-searches, the abuses that had been heaped upon the desperate souls imprisoned there. Young Javert remained stoic in the face of these regulation-sanctioned cruelties, and yet under his crisp uniform there would be the occasional quailing of an intact heart. This quailing was the same weakness that he had experienced as a boy, abandoned by his criminal father and betrayed by his mother — a damnable, despicable weakness that did not belong in the breast of a diligent servant of the law. 

There was something else: a prisoner known as Jean-le-Cric, a burly man far stronger than the others, whose spirit Toulon had not managed to break. This prisoner had not stinted to try time and again to escape, attempting to win his freedom. Young Javert knew he ought to feel nothing for the man save for righteous contempt… and yet his weak, treacherous heart could not escape a twinge of unwilling fascination.

Which was why, on the day that a man in a blue uniform had arrived from Paris and offered Javert the opportunity of a lifetime of higher service at the Prefecture of Police, Javert decided to secure his future, and let the devil’s sharp-nailed hands tear from his chest his frail, human heart.

That heart beat now in the jar on the devil’s shelf, a frightened, frantic thing that shuddered beneath the glass like a wounded animal, striving in vain to escape from this prison of its owner’s own making.

Meanwhile, the inspector still lived and breathed and went about his life, notwithstanding that his body no longer housed a beating heart, but a terrible, dull, lifeless block of dead wood that the devil had placed there in exchange. 

That block of wood enabled Inspector Javert to ascend the ranks at the Prefecture in Paris. His rise was rapid, slowed by neither compassion nor self-doubt; he was cold, austere, merciless in his enforcement of the law; he meted out justice for crimes large and little with an admirable even-handedness. His superiors noted how he lived a blameless life of privation, isolation, chastity, without suffering even a moment of weakness or indulgence — and they rewarded him for it, just as he and the devil had planned. 

The devil said, smirking, as the images faded and the glass grew dark again: “You see? I have made him perfect by his own lights, and he is the merciless hammer of the law on the downtrodden in Paris, and in that way he has made himself perfectly mine.”

The angel did not speak for a moment. The devil realised he was staring intently at the inspector’s trapped heart, which had started to twist inward upon itself, oozing dark-red blood.

“Why is the heart doing that?”

Frowning, the devil raised his power once more, and the images now showed not the heartless policeman who walked the streets of Paris, but the hopes and fears still living in the heart which he had given away.

In silence, they observed the inspector’s memories of a mother who had tried and failed and who lay cold in the ground; his visions of children abandoned as he had himself been abandoned, whom he now condemned mercilessly for their crimes; his dreams of a prisoner far stronger than others, whose broad, powerful body yielded to the punishing lash of the bagne, and whose indomitable gaze yet yielded to no one... 

“ _…Ah_ ,” breathed the angel, in sad comprehension. “The poor man. He does not know how much he truly suffers.”

The devil said, briskly, “Nonsense. He’s _glad_ — that he’s safe from having to experience these inconvenient emotions concerning his mother and grubby street children and the disturbingly burly prisoner. A wooden heart is much more suitable for an agent of the police, isn’t it?” 

“You know I don’t see it that way, old friend, and in truth neither do you.” The angel’s silver eyes glittered. “This chaste wooden-heartedness isn’t really what you’d prefer. You enjoy it when things get confused and emotional and complicated, the more complicated the better. Sins of the flesh are more delicious than sins of the spirit.”

“Sin is sin, and all sins lead to Hell,” the devil said, primly, but his old adversary was right: his heart wasn’t really in it.

The angel paused. The waiting room of Hell was perpetually lit with the fiendish glow of souls being tormented in nearby Purgatory. The devil had always considered that infernal light to be particularly nurturing to the houseplants, but he now realised that it also provided a fetching sheen to his adversary’s silver eyes.

“Let me show you the heart of my own faithful servant,” said the angel, and from one ineffable sleeve of his robes he produced a very small valise. The heart it contained was uncommonly large, and also silver in hue; it beat slowly and sonorously as it lay against the pure velvet that lined the valise’s interior.

The angel said: “This is the heart of an industrialist who owns a factory in the town of Montreuil-sur-Mer. His industry has single-handedly improved the fortunes of the town. He employs almost a quarter of its denizens, he has established a school and an infirmary, he is generous and virtuous and modest; thanks to his goodness, the poor have food on their plates and orphans are not turned out onto the streets.”

Despite himself, the devil was intrigued. He leaned forward to observe the image of this saintly man as reflected in the silver surface of his heart, keenly studying the powerful, burly figure, the indomitable gaze…

“…Why, it’s the prisoner from the bagne,” the devil said, in surprised recognition. “What a coincidence!”

“Indeed,” the angel said. “His name is Jean Valjean. He was finally released from Toulon after nineteen years of torment. One of my servants showed him mercy, and purchased his soul for God. He turned his back on his hatred and has served the Almighty faithfully and well ever since.” 

Scowling, the devil shook his head. “I’ll warrant old Jean-le-Cric won’t be your servant forever. If my man comes after him or the people he loves, without showing mercy or forbearance, your man’s precious benevolence will vanish, and the hate of the enraged prisoner will reassert itself. And, why, he’ll find himself possessed once again of his soul, and find his way this time to my domain.”

“Well, then, let’s place a wager.” 

This somewhat un-angelic suggestion took the devil by surprise. The angel continued: “Send your inspector after my industrialist. If my man raises his hand to strike yours, or to harm another, then I will relinquish my claim over his heart, and withdraw the protection of Heaven from around him, and consider myself as having lost this round to you. But if your man can, at the end of it, be moved to goodness … why, then you will likewise deliver up his soul, and free this poor heart from its jar, and release the prior claim of Hell.”

The devil saw no reason to hesitate. Why should he let the angel reconsider an offer so unfavourable to Heaven? The inspector was obviously incorruptible, and the bargain gave the devil the opportunity to win two hearts for Hell.

“You have a deal,” he said, and held out his ruby-red hand, and they shook upon it.

 

*

 

Pursuant to the terms of the wager, the devil sent Javert to Montreuil-sur-Mer. 

He watched as the severe inspector and his heart of wood laid down the law in that industrious town. He observed his man coldly survey its vagrant elements and enforce all regulations strictly against its beggars and destitutes, unencumbered by any shred of humanity.

In a similar vein, the inspector maintained a dispassionate surveillance of the man he suspected to be Jean-le-Cric. He pursued investigations in a strictly professional manner, without anger or rage or self-doubt, and when avenues of enquiry closed before him, he tirelessly pursued others that opened. He was unmoved when the man who called himself Madeleine risked his life to rescue another; he was indifferent to the man’s anger when arresting a prostitute for attacking a bourgeois in the streets; he did not fail in his duty when his carefully-written findings turned out to be false and he was compelled to confess matters to the mayor and ask to be reprimanded.

Throughout this time, the inspector’s heart experienced a series of convulsions, high on the devil’s shelf. 

It groaned as it witnessed Madeleine’s naked heroism, the broad, muck-covered body needlessly risking death as it strained to lift the horse-cart off Father Fauchelevent in Cavée Saint-Firmin; it became enraged when the mayor intervened at the station-house and deprived the inspector of his jurisdiction over the woman Fantine. 

And night after night, the heart was plagued by dreams of passion and violence — dreams of capturing the prisoner; of stripping him of his fine, fraudulent clothing and spreading the muscular thighs and taking possession of that body that had belonged to the chains of the bagne; of showing no mercy as he took the false mayor again and again; of sinking his teeth into the burly muscles and devouring him piece by piece and being himself devoured, in a paroxysm of ardour that was indistinguishable from anguish.

Then after those dreams came dreams that were even worse. Dreams of glad subjugation and gentleness that came after; of kneeling in supplication and being forgiven, of being embraced as tenderly as a lover or a child. Dreams of being taken with a strength that did not come from authority, of giving pleasure that had nothing to do with pain, of cherishing and being cherished in a way that would make any heart burst its veins with longing.

“You see how things are with your servant,” the angel remarked when he stopped by to observe for himself the heart’s conflicted desires in all of their flagrant detail. “If his heart were his own, Javert would wish for the companionship of my industrious, courageous man.”

The devil snorted. “You are entirely misguided, old boy. These dreams make clear that if his heart were his own, the inspector would give himself unstintingly to the sins of gluttony, and lust, and sodomy, and tell himself that the latter is no longer a crime across all of France.” 

He watched the unfortunate heart writhe helplessly with yearning, and he cooed through the glass: “But don’t worry, Inspector. That block of wood in your chest will see to it that you don’t feel a blessed thing.”

The angel’s silver gaze clouded over. The devil gave his old adversary a curious sideways look. “How is your mayor, by the way?”

The angel sighed. “He is being sorely tempted. He bargains with himself and with God. Condemn himself and the vulnerable people of Montreuil-sur-mer who would starve without him? Or spare the town, and condemn the innocent man who has been arrested in his name? He weeps, he importunes the Almighty, he seeks to shield himself from the greater sin.”

The devil observed it for himself — this man in the prime of his life, who spent his youth unfairly condemned, who had suffered so much untrammelled cruelty at the hands of the world. Madeleine’s eyes, brimming with tears, were turned up to the heavens; his handsome features were set in lines of agony. 

My, the mayor’s despair was delicious! The devil stuck out his red tongue and was permitted a single, exquisite taste.

“Perhaps you’re right. I should return the inspector his heart, just for tonight, so he might know the delights of the sins of the flesh.”

“Tonight Javert has already left for Arras,” observed the angel, and then they both fell quiet as Madeleine finally made his decision and shouldered his cross.

“Good luck to your man,” the devil said, at last. “And to you, old boy, for tomorrow I will prevail.”

 

*

 

When the day of the trial came and went, and the angel did not come round to the devil’s corner, the devil tucked the jar containing Javert’s heart under his arm and went looking for his adversary.

He found the angel lounging under a spreading oak tree among the fields in the outskirts of Paradise. Silver tokens hung from the massive branches, sparkling in the perpetual sunlight. In the distance, the pearlescent gates to the Heavenly City shone like a beacon, and from time to time a glad cry would arise from within, signalling yet another faithful soul’s admittance into the Eternal Presence.

“See here, old boy! Your man has confessed himself before the assizes in Arras, and his crimes have been uncovered, and my man has him trapped at last. I believe my victory is imminent!”

“Hush, it is starting,” the angel said, softly, and the devil fell silent. 

The false mayor and the heartless inspector faced off against each other over the cooling body of the woman Fantine. A great foment of rage was building within the former, and a savage satisfaction within the latter.

“You have murdered this woman,” Valjean said, dully, reaching out. With his tremendous strength he pulled free one of the iron bars of the headpiece of the bed, to use as a bludgeon.

As one, Heaven and Hell held its breath.

Javert locked gazes with Valjean, and a fierce tremor ran through him as he realised he stared into eyes that were as empty as his own. 

He said, in triumph: “Why, we are the same, Jean Valjean. We made the same deal, long ago. I know where you have come from, and who it is that owns your soul. Who better than I to know the depths to which a man like you could fall?”

“Your master does not own my soul,” Valjean muttered, and he readied himself, weapon held above his head, for attack. 

The devil was certain, in that moment, that he had won. Jean Valjean had reverted to type — the brutal convict, the prisoner who was filled with nothing but his hate, hurling his armed self like a weapon against his tormentor.

But in the last moment, Valjean withheld; he flung away his weapon, dodged around Javert without laying so much as a finger upon him, and leaped through the open window.

No one human could have survived the drop. Javert could only watch what he believed was the escape of a man who had sold his soul for superhuman strength. 

Of course, the devil and the angel knew better.

As Javert let out a roar of frustration, and the heart twisted desperately in its jar, the angel turned his faint, mild smile to his adversary. 

“It seems my man has passed his test. Are you willing to concede on our wager?”

The devil put his nose in the air. “Hardly. You will note my man has similarly not succumbed.”

The angel held out his silver hand. “A draw, then?”

“Until the next time,” the devil conceded, and once again, they clasped hands upon it.

 

*

 

The angel sent Valjean to Montfermeil and then to Paris, and the inspector followed, always one step behind. 

The devil complained bitterly that the angel was not playing fair, that he was surreptitiously permitting Valjean to narrowly escape, thus avoiding a reprise of the confrontation that had almost cost the man his soul in Montreuil. 

The angel, though, clearly had other fish to fry. It seemed Valjean had acquired a daughter, and was learning about chastity and self-abnegation within the walls of a convent, and the devil supposed a heart made of silver would help the man deal with such otherwise unpalatable self-sacrifice. 

Meanwhile, the devil’s man, Javert, had found his heart of wood to be similarly crucial in his long years of service at the Prefecture in Paris. The dead wood in his chest did not distract him from his tasks, but permitted him to perform his job to the satisfaction of his superiors; he was unfettered by weakness or desire, and when he slept at night, he did not dream.

The devil saw that his man was content with the deal they had made. Javert had made full use of the opportunity he had been given, had not thought of his family and their wasted choices since he left Toulon behind. The wood in his chest was dry and hard as bone, and it no longer creaked, even when the spring sun made trees bud and leaves unfurl.

The years passed in like fashion, and the devil had come to expect that his infallible inspector would maintain his faithful service before sacrificing himself in the name of duty, surrendering to the rightful claim of Hell, and going down to serve his acceptable sentence for eternity. The inspector’s displaced, frantic heart — which once had twisted itself into spasms and been so plagued by dreams of outrage and ardour — now lay quiescent under the glass, in shrivelled contrast to the thriving plants beside it, and suffered to move no longer.

Matters ought to have come to this journey’s end. It was a tried and tested route, and the proper fulfilment of a bargain that men had made for millennia. 

However, something else intervened. 

When Inspector Javert went to the barricades at the Rue de la Chanvrerie in 1832 to sacrifice his life for the law, he found himself the recipient of unexpected salvation. Instead of a bullet in the head, he was released from his bonds, taken into a deserted alley away from the barricade, and set free.

The man who freed him was Jean Valjean — the convict from Toulon, the mayor from Montreuil, the man who had every reason to take revenge on Javert and to see him dead. 

Javert laughed when Valjean pulled out his knife. He seemed glad of his wooden heart, which had protected him from years of weakness while he had sought to discipline the prisoner, while he had laboured at the mayor’s side, and which would not fail him now even under Valjean’s queer, burning gaze.

“You cannot fool me, Jean Valjean,” he said with satisfaction, even as the ropes fell away. “I know what you are. You cannot hide it. Not from me.”

Valjean shook his head. There was the distant sound of a gun.

“Don’t you understand what I say?” Javert demanded. “Do you think I don’t know the bargains you’ve made? Do you think you can trick me now, that there will be further bargains, that I might be duped into—”

“No bargains,” Valjean said. “I said to you the last time we faced each other: your master does not own my soul.”

His voice was very quiet, but there was a powerful authority in it. It made something inside Javert shudder, like the distant tolling of a church bell, a call to someone who had not made the same choices that Javert had.

“Here; you may have my address. I don’t doubt that we will see each other again very soon.”

Javert snarled with disbelief, ready to spring forward and reveal the soulless convict and lackey of the devil for what he was. But perhaps through some trick of the sun, Valjean’s eyes seemed altered. Instead of emptiness, Javert saw a reflection of an open door, light spilling through it, and beyond, a shining country filled with more verdant largesse than the eye could see, and a welcoming figure standing inside.

Then Valjean turned from him. The vision that had held Javert captive was gone, and Javert was left unexpectedly reeling, as if, for the first time in his life, he could not be sure of the ground beneath his feet… 

_An outrage! Blatant trickery!_ The devil snatched up the jar containing Javert’s shrivelled heart and stormed down the road out of Hell and up the white-bricked path to Paradise. His footfalls set fire to the surfaces he passed. He kicked at the demon-spawn too slow to avoid him; in the Elysian Fields, tiny, startled cherubim and fingerlings darted out of his way. 

The devil was almost looking forward to the angel’s righteous anger, but when he finally arrived at the spreading oak, his adversary looked upon his enraged countenance and merely sighed his mild, long-suffering sigh. 

“What the Devil have you done?” 

The angel said, patiently: “Not a thing. Let alone anything that would make you swear so by yourself!”

The devil shook his fist at his adversary. “Don’t you try to distract me! How did your man not at least try to kill my inspector? He has every reason to wish revenge, and besides, there is now the girl to protect. By freeing Javert, he condemns not just himself but his daughter. No man can be so steadfast, not even someone who has sold his heart to you.”

“You underestimate him, and all men. Humans are capable of more goodness and unselfishness than dreamt of even by Heaven.”

The devil snarled, “Does that mean that our bargain is avoided? Since you have shown your man incapable of reverting to hate?”

“Perhaps not, since you have not shown your man incapable of love,” said the angel, serenely.

The devil opened his mouth to make free with a malicious jeer, and then he noticed that the glass jar under his arm was trembling. 

He looked down, and realised to his shock that the shrivelled heart under the glass had begun, once more, to beat.

“No. _No!_ ”

The devil raised his fists to the sky, and the heavens quivered at his shout of fury. Turtledoves fell from the trees and fawns sprinted for cover and the blossoms of the field turned their faces away.

The angel squinted at the glass jar. “If your little outburst is quite finished, there is something happening at the Quai des Gesvres,” he pointed out, mildly.

The devil stopped mid-howl to observe, too. For a moment, he could not believe what he saw.

His man, the irreproachable inspector, embarking on an errand of mercy in assisting a wounded insurgent to evade the long arm of the law, allowing Jean Valjean to convey the boy from the scene of the crime to his grandfather’s home. The infallible policeman, who was obliged to seize and arrest the fugitive from justice and to return him unstintingly to the gallows, instead, impossibly, refusing to do his duty. 

_Impossible! Never in a thousand years!_ But there was Inspector Javert all the same, turning in his resignation from his life, and casting his body into the greedy abyss of the river.

“This must be some trick,” the devil panted. “You, your man must have duped him somehow. Javert would, would _never_ …”

As he trailed off, the angel remarked, “Nothing is impossible with the power of love.”

“Are you quite insane? Your man has no reason to love him, and every reason to hate!”

“You misunderstand me,” the angel said. “It is not to Valjean’s love which I refer.”

“You make no sense, angel. In any case, I won’t outstay my welcome; I have a soul to collect.”

“Are you quite sure of that? Remember our bargain,” the angel said, pointedly, and nodded to the jar, where Javert’s revived heart was fluttering like a captive bird awakened from an enchanted slumber. 

 

*

 

This time, the devil did not waste precious seconds on howling in outrage. He took himself post-haste to the crossroads between the Earth and the paths to Heaven and Hell, flames licking at his heels.

At the intersection of the path of molten lava that ran into darkness and the white cobblestones road that led to the light, stood the spirit of Inspector Javert. Hatless, still damp from the river, he remained rooted to the spot, defeated but still deferential, and dripping onto the ground.

“You are mine,” the devil said firmly, and held out his hand.

“That is fair,” the spirit of Javert said, scrupulous even to the end, and made to take a step forward.

To his and the devil’s utter surprise, his legs did not move. No matter how much he tried, his feet would not obey him. 

“What new trickery is this?” the devil demanded. “Come with me at once!” 

“I am trying,” Javert said in frustration; the sweat stood out on his brow as he tried in vain to make his limbs move. “I know that it was the bargain I made long ago—but I cannot. My legs will not move.”

“If you cannot, then I will make you,” the devil said, between his teeth, and he raised his red power around them both. A maelstrom of fire leaped up from the ground and surrounded Javert in irresistible flame — it should have burned his soul to cinders, but for some reason, it did not touch him.

Howling once more in fury, the devil raised first armies of demons and then terrifying beasts of the wilderness against him; monsters with ten heads and a hundred eyes, and a thousand claws and mouths to rend and tear and devour — but for some reason, Javert seemed to be protected by the same power that made it impossible for him to take a single step forward.

“I don’t belong here,” Javert cried at last, overwhelmed. “My heart is yours; I know it well. It was a bargain I made, and I’m ready to bear the consequences. Let me go with you!”

Even then, his feet would not obey him. The terrible fire and light and fearsome beasts could not break whatever curse held him frozen at this crossroad, unable to go either left or right.

There appeared to be no solution for this conundrum. The man was held by some unfathomable curse that stumped the devil and all his tricks, until at last, a familiar voice reached their ears.

“Javert, is that you?”

Both Javert and the devil turned, breathing heavily, and found themselves face to face with none other than Jean Valjean. Clad in a shirt of white, his hair gleamed silver, his weary face filled with the peace of someone who walked no longer among the living. 

By his side stood the angel. He unfurled his silver wings, and he was in the moment so great and terrible and majestic that the devil himself was taken aback.

“So you are dead as well,” Javert murmured to Valjean, as if now in truth the old enmity between them could be buried. “Go. You are not needed here.”

Valjean frowned. He turned to look towards the pearly gates beyond the cobblestoned path, behind which a gentle light shone forth, beckoning. “Won’t you join me?”

Javert laughed, and then he doubled over, grasping at his chest in sudden-seeming pain. “You know that place isn’t for me,” he said when he could straighten again. “I sold my soul to this devil, long ago. And now the day has come when I must be his. And yet—I find my feet will not lead me there.”

“It is not customary to tarry before this crossroad,” the angel said sombrely. “Jean Valjean, you are welcome among the faithful in Heaven. And as for you, brother Javert, you know you made your choice, and you must walk that path with the devil, to the bitter end.”

Valjean looked at the beckoning light awaiting him. He raised his hand to the angel’s, and then he turned back to Javert and the devil, hesitating.

“Surely it is not too late for you to come with me?” 

“It is too late for me,” Javert said. “Your angel said it himself: I am not wanted where you go.”

He turned back to the devil, and was about to extend his hand in despair when Valjean reached out and took hold of it with his strong, warm fingers.

“Everyone is wanted where I go. If a wretch like me is welcome there, then so will you be.”

The devil said, impatiently, “What new madness is this? Of course you are not welcome in Heaven. Angel, tell your man not to make free with this nonsense.”

“It’s true, Jean,” said the angel. “Some force prevents him from moving on to Hell, but even so, he cannot go with you to Heaven. He has sold his soul, and I’m afraid he has not shown himself deserving of redemption.”

Valjean gazed at the angel earnestly. “How can you say that? The Almighty is always merciful, and all men living may earn their redemption, as I did.”

“But the inspector is no longer living,” the angel said, gently. “He is therefore bound for Hell, unless the devil relinquishes his claim and agrees to return his heart... And he would only do that if someone called in a very old wager.”

At his words, Javert cried out as though he had been ripped open. With a groan of agony, he grasped his chest—and there, a shoot had sprouted, piercing through his chest so that he clutched at living, springy wood.

“Hellfire and damnation,” the devil said. “There is no way under Heaven’s bleeding eyebrows that this man was in his life moved to goodness... unless...” 

The river. An act of defiance, and an act of mercy. The first and last one of Javert’s life. It might not have been enough to redeem him from Hell, but it had been enough to win him the bargain made by Heaven long ago.

“ _…Bollocks_ ,” the devil said, helplessly, and the angel smiled his modest, beatific smile, as if gloating itself was not a thing angels did. 

The devil ground his teeth together so hard they might well have turned to powder. “Very well. Let it not be said that the devil fails to keep his promises. I relinquish Hell’s claim… Only, you have not earned your redemption, and cannot be claimed by Heaven.”

There was only one thing that could be done.

“That path ahead of you leads back to the Seine,” the devil said to Javert. “You are free to take it.” 

He opened the glass jar for the first time in thirty-one years. The heart was beating again, slow and steady, and it had sprouted a small red-leafed tendril, as if its years of proximity to the devil’s houseplants had transformed its essential nature.

The devil handed it to Javert. “Take your heart back. See what good it does you.”

Javert took the living thing in his shaking hands. The strange tendrils protruding from his breast sprouted forth new shoots, and wrapped themselves around the long-lost heart, and drew it inward until it once again resumed its old place.

Javert fell to his knees at the crossroads, his legs no longer strong enough to hold his weight. Helpless tears stood in his eyes for the first time in decades; new emotions wracked his body with great, shuddering tremors. His dark gaze shone with thirty-one years of fevered dreams and desires and immense regret.

Watching, the devil was filled with a renewed sense of triumph. With his vulnerable, living heart, how could the inspector endure the uncertainty of life, the ardent dreams, the fatal weaknesses? He could not. He would fight, but sooner or later, he would cast himself into the river once again, and then he would not escape the road to Hell. 

And then a broad arm came around Javert’s shoulders. “I will not abandon him,” Valjean said, resolutely, kneeling beside to Javert. “Here, old friend. If they will not let you walk the path to Heaven with me, then let me follow you back into the world.”

The devil and Javert turned to stare at this unlikely benefactor. Javert’s gaze was clouded; the devil knew it was thanks to the multitude of lustful, guilt-ridden dreams of Valjean that had now been restored to him along with his heart.

The angel said to his faithful servant, very gently, “Are you quite sure? You know what waits for you there.”

Valjean’s face had turned quite pale. He murmured, as if shouldering a heavy burden, “Perhaps this time it will be different. Perhaps this time the children will not turn away from me. But even if things are the same, it is only for a few months. I can endure the pain again now that I know that eternity awaits.”

Javert interrupted, coughing, “That is ridiculous!” Blood was dripping down his shirt front where the tendrils had forced their way out of his breast, and where his heart had forced its way back inside. He climbed, painfully, to his feet. “I turned from my duty to save your life. I cannot believe your daughter did not esteem my sacrifice, or sufficiently esteem you.” He glared at Valjean. “How did you die?”

Valjean did not answer at once. Despite Javert’s grip on his arm, he stared into the distance as if overcome by all-too-human memories. 

“I died because I did not wish to be a burden to her,” he said, eventually. “And in the end, she came to me, and I was forgiven, and I was no longer alone… That will have to suffice. What are a few months of loneliness when one knows that afterwards, peace awaits? And at least, when I return to her today, she will smile and call me Father, and I will know that moment of no greater joy in this world, not on earth and not in Heaven.”

Javert glared at Valjean again; it seemed to be the only way he could express his new emotions. “Loneliness — for you? You are mistaken. It cannot be right. You need no forgiveness from any man; the gates to Heaven stood wide open for you. It was to this angel that your soul was sold, and your life has shown the better for it — I see that now.” He looked down. “As for me: I had not meant to go on in this life, because I had been wrong, and I did not mean to live in a world where Javert was wrong. But this means that in the world, you were right after all.”

Javert’s voice echoed with a strange, soft roar — like the distant rush of sap through waking wood in the spring. “Jean Valjean, know that I will never come after you again. If live I must, I will try to redeem myself on my own, and perhaps one day, when death finds me, I will be allowed to choose a road, and it will be done. And for you, you were not meant to die. If you are to return to our world, you must live as you should — with your daughter, in your home, in love and comfort.”

Valjean drew in a deep, sad breath. “It cannot be,” he said softly. “She is to be wed to the boy we saved. If someone were to tell, she would be ruined before his family. Surely you of all people must understand that.”

“She will be ruined, you say?” Javert frowned. “You are an ex-convict; well, even so! You are also a good man. Your good works will stand you in good stead. Surely the family will understand.”

Wretchedly, Valjean shook his head. “How could any of my works ever be enough? I could never risk her happiness. At least for now, I will be her father once more, and not think of the loneliness that is to come. This is more treasure than I deserve.”

There were tears in his eyes. The way back to the river lay clear — so close now that they could almost hear its loud, merciless roar. But just as loud was a different sound that resounded across the crossroads between the worlds: the creak of stretching wood, the rush of sap, the ardour of a bud aching to unfurl into leaves.

Javert reached out without thinking, his fingertips brushing against the tears on Valjean’s face.

Both men froze in shock. Javert drew in a shuddering breath, as if the heart within him was being forced to stretch into new, unfamiliar shapes. Very slowly, Valjean raised his hand to touch Javert’s wrist; in the moonlight, his eyes took on a new warmth, as if lit with the sudden awareness of Heaven.

The devil glanced from the two men to the angel that stood at Valjean’s side, and saw him surreptitiously sliding Valjean’s heart-valise into his silver sleeve.

He hastened over to confront his adversary suspiciously. “What are you up to now?”

The angel drew him aside, sheepishly. “It is just… over the years, Valjean’s heart has grown so cold. All this saintly self-abnegation — it is well for some, but others take to turning away from those they love and feel they do not deserve.”

“And so? You have given back his heart for his own good, is that it?”

“Old friend, you know it’s not up to me. My good and faithful servant — he has withheld from sin at every turn: he saved the boy who will take his beloved daughter away, and he freed the man whom he has every reason to hate. But if he had had his heart, if he had known a love less than chaste, and desires of the flesh, then perhaps he would have learned to better esteem the pleasures of this life, and not be so willing to throw it away.”

“I see,” the devil mused. “I did not realise you, of all people, could believe that being free of desire could be too much of a good thing.”

“You underestimate me, my friend. Living is a lonely enough thing without love.”

The devil snorted, but he was not unmoved. He turned his attention back to the strange couple at the crossroads between Heaven and Hell.

The two men hesitated at the brink of the path that led back to the world. Javert’s hand was still pressed to Valjean’s cheek, as Javert had never touched anyone in life. They beheld each other, feeling softness, feeling warmth and the thrum of life crackling in their veins, experiencing the urgent pulse of their restored hearts.

“Are you so intent on your loneliness then?” Javert was murmuring. “You think there can be nothing but pain and sadness for you in the world, but you are still willing to go back. For me, who has hounded you for nearly my entire life. Why?”

“It seemed just one further thing God has asked of me,” Valjean said quietly. “How could I walk on and leave you to your torment? And I find that the loneliness is not too much to bear at the thought that I might see Cosette again, and have her love again, at least for a little time.”

“You are a bewildering man,” Javert said, frowning. He dropped his hand, and they stood very close together. “What if I tell you that you do not have to be lonely again?” 

“I don’t understand what you mean.” Valjean spoke in what was barely more than a whisper. “I know what must be done. I know what will happen. I have borne it before; it can be borne again.”

“But no one decreed that it has to happen the same way as before. I am here, now.”

For a long moment, Valjean did not move. In his eyes was the self-denial of a man who had toiled without rest for long years, whose soul had resided with God all along, who had given love freely but believed he had not deserved to be loved in return.

Javert cleared his throat, and then he held out his hand. Valjean clasped it, and together they set off down the path that led back to June 1832, and the river, and the rest of their lives.

The angel and the devil watched them go. 

“So,” the angel said, eventually, “all’s well that ends well.”

The devil glared. “In what universe would one consider this a good ending?”

“In this one, and not merely for me? For you did not entirely lose the wager, and both our former servants now have the freedom to make their own choices about love.”

The devil snorted again. “I can read you like a book, old boy. You think they’ll choose to love each other, and thereby find their way to Heaven at the end.” He leaned in and smiled his leering smile. “You forget that men unused to love more often than not choose sin, and lust, and selfishness, and though they might not expect it, they’ll find themselves on the road to Hell instead soon enough.” 

At the end of the path, in the distance, the two men had found their way back to the world, to the banks of the Seine at midnight. The light of Paris’s faraway stars echoed in the angel’s silver eyes, and lit his infinitely compassionate smile. 

“At least it will be their choice, and a better one than keeping their hearts locked in a glass jar, or a box.”

The devil shrugged. “You are as bewildering as your man Valjean. What are we going to do now that we have two empty vessels ripe for filling?”

The angel shrugged, too. “There may be other souls out there looking to make their deals with the devil, and to taste the power of love. Shall we go and see for ourselves?”

The devil was about to put his nose in the air again, and then he hesitated. Loneliness was not a concept that applied to devils, but there was something to be said about travelling the world with a companion nonetheless. 

“Well. It’s not as if we have anything better to do.”

He held out his ruby-red hand, and the angel took it, and they, too, set off down the path together.

**Author's Note:**

> My eternal gratitude to Miss M for the beta!
> 
> Title is from the Graham Greene novel of the same name, about restraint and longing and the Eternal, and protagonists sacrificing themselves in the name of love. _“The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn’t know what goes on inside a single human heart.”_


End file.
